


requiem.

by presumenothing (justjoy)



Category: Miss Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26708146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/presumenothing
Summary: It doesn’t make sense, that she should be able to exist in a world where Sherlock isn’t. And yet –And yet. Here she is, and here Sherlock isn’t.Denial is a textbook reaction to loss, Wato knows that, and more importantly it’s something Sherlock would scrunch up her nose and frown at, so she tries to avoid it. Tries to look at instead of away, to not flinch from the void gapingly dark as Sherlock had been dazzlingly bright.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	requiem.

It doesn’t make sense, that she should be able to exist in a world where Sherlock isn’t. And yet – 

And yet. Here she is, and here Sherlock isn’t.

Denial is a textbook reaction to loss, Wato knows that, and more importantly it’s something Sherlock would scrunch up her nose and frown at, so she tries to avoid it. Tries to look at instead of away, to not flinch from the void gapingly dark as Sherlock had been dazzlingly bright.

Has been. Is still, a dark so blinding that Wato’s eyes water from it, that she would have blinked and turned on instinct if she hadn’t felt too frozen to move.

Kento doesn’t visit, but only because he leaves a card with Ms. Hatano: a plain affair, his name black calligraphy on one side and the neat line of a number on the other that’s listed nowhere on his official namecard. (Wato can only wonder for a moment if this was the same number that’d been saved on Sherlock’s phone, before she has to stop thinking about it anyway.)

And they’re all like that – Kento and Inspector Reimon and Sergeant Shibata and Ms. Hatano and all the others that she never got Sherlock to introduce her to and now never will, stepping quietly but solidly around her. Like she has as much right to grieve as any of them.

Wato wants to ask why, to question _how_ she deserves this, when she had known Sherlock for a time so fleeting in comparison to any and all of them. 

But Sherlock’s never liked it when people ask questions they already had the answer to, except maybe for rhetorical effect, and Wato is already certain of the answer to this one. 

Sherlock is a good person. _Had been_ a good person, who drew good people to her in turn, people who could support her brilliance and who now support Wato even when she doesn’t ask for it.

Wato goes to dress in mourning black and opens her wardrobe to remember that Sherlock had thrown all of that out, even the trusty med school wardrobe that she’d bought specifically because darker shades fared better in hospitals, and replaced all of it with colour that seems a little faded now without her there to reflect luminous on them.

Or maybe that’s just the burn in her eyes; the afterimage Wato will be blinking away for the rest of her life.

Everything else is paled, in the shadow of that.

(Ms. Hatano finds her standing there, later, and Wato doesn’t ask her if it’s been hours because she knows the answer to that too.

What she cannot comprehend is this: the black scarf that Ms. Hatano puts in her hands even though she hasn’t asked, with a soft murmur of words and something that feels like silk but warmer, when she wraps it around herself. The takeaway that Sergeant Shibata brings and Inspector Reimon’s easy chatter in his wake, subdued but still cheerful even when Wato can’t give more than a nod and smile in response. The neat list of information and contacts that arrives in her email inbox from an address that isn’t on Kento’s namecard either, after she realises that she might want to go back to medicine even if she isn’t ready to go back to Sapporo yet and might never be. 

It’s the last mystery Sherlock leaves her, but the answer is up to Wato this time, and it is one she tells herself over and again, even when she has to blink and look away: she _belongs_ with all of them, good people now each missing a piece of the brightest sun, and she too will be okay, someday.)

**Author's Note:**

> this has been stuck in my throat since i heard the news, i just couldn't find the words for it until now.
> 
> rest in peace, takeuchi-san. i watched you for so brief a time, and perhaps it is selfish to claim even that much, to wish to see your sherlock again just one more time when so much more than that has been lost, but you were bright, and you are loved.
> 
> thank you for what you gave us – thank you, thank you, _thank you._


End file.
